Today was a busy, busy day.
Russell was leaving on a business trip, so he was up extra early to pack. We got all the clothes and omiyage to fit in his suitcase and then had a late breakfast. Around noon he headed out and I beelined for the fancy grocery store with the good selection of wine and cheese.
Forbidden dinner in hand, it was time to go home and clean. The house hasn't been too bad, but we have really only been straightening up and keeping dishes washed since Lis was here. A great deal of cruft had built up in the corners. Since I'm proud of how much I got done before Russell had even left the country (he had to fly to Tokyo first and is only flying out now) I'm going to list it all:
Washed the bedding and my pajamas
Aired the futon and comforters
Mopped up the dew that had accumulated into puddles around the outside walls of our bedroom.
Swept up all the fuzz and dust that had accumulated around bedroom
Treated the floors and windows with a bleach rinse (mildew has been popping up where the dew forms in the morning)
Brought in the futon, etc. and reassembled the nest.
Straightened, dusted and washed Russell's desk (which was a disaster area)
Swept under the desk (where fuzz especially likes to accumulate)
Put away the clothes that Russell folded this morning
Cleaned the living room table (kotatsu)
Swept and mopped the floors in the kitchen and living room
Washed the remaining dishes
I am now sitting down to relax with a glass of Malbec.
The next couple weeks are off to a tidy start.
Brie, cheddar and pepper gouda for dinner...
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
New Year 2012 FOOD
My apologies to anyone reading this who is actually Japanese and knows what SHOULD be eaten for New Year in Japan. I did the best I could with the limited knowledge I have. The following food may not be traditionally prepared, but hopefully I was going the right direction with it. Because there is was so much food involved it deserves its own post.To start things off, we made sure almost every day of Lis's visit was filled with Mochi. Delicious mochi. As you may recall, mochi is a pounded rice cake. It can be eaten savory: grilled or added to soups or eaten sweet, with red bean paste in the middle or red bean AND a strawberry. There are other variations as well. All delicous.
New Year's Eve: Soba
I am not sure how soba is suppose to be prepared for the New Year, but I know you are suppose to eat it. My version was a soup using the stock that came with the noodles plus vegetables that didn't seem too out of place in a Japanese dish. Note that my presentation skills are still somewhat lacking.
Apple BunniesThis has nothing to do with New Years, but they are a staple of Japanese lunch boxes and I was having no luck describing them verbally to Lis. My solution? Buy and apple and show her. I don't think she was quite seeing how this equalled a plate of bunnies. Can you see them?
A Little Bump for Grandpa Pieterick
While the coming hike kept us off alcohol the evening of New Year's Eve, Russell and I did toast Grandpa Pieterick with our shots of brandy.
New Year's Morning: Toasted Flax Seed Peanut Butter from Trader JoesThanks to Lis, we had gloriously delicious peanut butter on our toast, brewed some tea for the thermos and hit the trail. At the top? We had dried persimmons and various other snacks we had hauled up with us. That's a persimmon going down the hatch in the photo. You can tell by the grin. None of our hiking provisions count as traditional.
Plum Wine:Russell and I finally broke out our plum wine that we set aside last spring. I'm pretty sure we posted about the process at the time. You are suppose to let the wine sit for 6 months to 2 years. 6 months was right at the New Year, and since we had a guest it seemed fitting. The verdict? Wow! Its so easy to make awesome plum wine! It was equal or better than anything we have had before, which gives us confidence to try making more - perhaps with variations.
Osechi: You saw the pictures from the previous post, but here are the boxes in close-up glory. I may not love everything in osechi, but it sure is fun to eat so many tiny and varied things. Maybe next year I'll make it myself? I wouldn't wish that on guests, though, so it will depend on whether anyone is visiting.
This friend is a salted and grilled breen fish - known as Tai in Japan. (I think). These are usually grilled in such a way that their one fin is sticking straight up and their tail is curled up. I'm not sure of the significance, but that is the way its done. Ours followed tradition, but its not easy to see.
This box has honey grilled pork, grilled chicken, boiled oysters, salmon roe, crunchy little fishies, and kurikinton - which is a yellow yam and chestnut paste - this one with three sweet chestnuts sitting on top.
This box had mushrooms, bamboo shoot, some sort of celery-like vegetable, carrots, burdock root, sweet black soybeans (both small and large), lotus root, pink and white fish cake, grated daikon salad and some sort of shoot that is suppose to help with new beginnings.
This final box included different forms of mochi, a form of candied walnut with bonito flakes cooked in, grilled tuna (buri), crunchy fish egg sacs (the long yellow things), a rose made of smoked salmon, several variations on sweet egg omelet and some sort of weird meat roll.
Our osechi was enjoyed with liberal amounts of green tea and plum wine. It was no wonder Russell and I couldn't move afterwards. After a long nap, I suggested going downtown to see Ikuta shrine again, this time in full New Year's swing. I knew there would be food stands, but we were still too full from the osechi. We bought mochi with bean paste and strawberries in the middle and headed home. We saved our treats for breakfast the next day. We also made ozoni on January 2nd. I believe I have pictures posted from last year, but I forgot to take any this year. The version of ozoni I make was learned from a friend last year. Ozoni comes in many forms. it is a soup that you eat around New Years and I'm pretty sure all variations contain savory mochi and red carrots. Probably also some sort of mushroom. From there, though, recipes vary. Ours had thinly sliced pork, white miso, leeks, mushrooms, red carrot and mochi. So delicious.
And that ends the auspicious (and less than auspicious) foods for the New Year. If I get around to it, I will have another food post with other treats we enjoyed during Lis' stay. Japan is all about the food. The ancient temples aren't so bad, either. Stay tuned.
P.S. Thanks to Lis for sharing her photos. She tended to have much nicer ones than I did!
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Starting 2012 off right
Our winter break started on December 28th, and that happened to be the day my dear friend Lis came to visit from Minnesota (where she is finishing her PhD).
We have mostly been working in the mornings (Lis had a dissertation deadline to meet) and exploring Kobe in the afternoon. For the last day of the year we got out of the house a little earlier than normal and did some last minute exploring before everything shut down for New Years.
Left on the to do list? A walk through Kitano (the European-style houses on the hill), a mattcha/redbean latte from Starbucks (only spotted the day before) and a swing through Harborland to see the water (and perhaps the pink pirate ship). We managed to hit the first two birds with one stone by drinking our latte at the Starbucks that's IN one of the old houses in Kitano. We not only had the mattcha/ redbean latte, but also the redbean "cube danish" with the mattcha frosting. After a lazy morning chatting, we wandered down the hill towards the water. We stopped in Chinatown for a steamed nikuman and then did a lap around Harborland.
Having done our tourist duty we headed home to prepare for the New Year. We made soba (buckwheat noodle) soup with the fancy red carrots that come out for the New Year and we settled in for an evening of nationally televised musical splendor. They did not disappoint this year. There were many instant costume changes, enka stars rising up on enormous chinese dragons, pop idols playing with interactive decorative screens and a Japanese version of "Mexican" dancing to an enka song called "Mariachi."
At 11:45 the show ended and scenes from famous temples and shrines around Japan started moving across the TV. The Buddhists started ringing the enormous temple bells (108 times?), people were waiting anxiously to pray for good fortune in the coming year, there were bonfires and people skiing with torches in Hokkaido. At midnight the throngs of visitors poured into the temples and shrines to pray, dispose of old luck charms and buy charms for the coming year.
One Japanese tradition is to go to a temple or shrine for midnight and join these throngs. I was up for it, but Russell and Lis couldn't be budged. For good reason, I suppose... we had decided to do hatsu-hinode or the first greeting of the sun. That meant waking up at 4am and hiking up a mountain to get the best view of the sun as it crested above the horizon at 7am. They were looking forward to their full four hours of sleep. It was probably for the best.
We did get up at 4am. We made a thermos of tea and packed snacks and dry underclothes to change into at the top. We managed to hit the street at 4:45 and hiked up behind our house to a trailhead that would take us to the top of Mt Maya. This is the same Mt Maya we swore we would never hike up again after getting the idea to go hiking our first summer in Japan. It was no easy hike, but we did better this time than the first time. Lis (mountain goat she is and dead set on seeing the sun no matter what) followed a more seasoned team of hikers and made it to the top of the mountain before us. Russell and I plodded our way up as well and also managed to arrive about 15-20 minutes before the sun rose. Perfect timing.
After the sunrise we changed into our dry clothes, ate snacks and reassessed. We could go down the way we came up (boring) or try a new route that would take us over to the neighboring mountain and down to the Kobe reservoir and Nunobiki waterfall. We opted for route #2. We were very footsore by the end of the trip, but rather proud of the accomplishment, too. We staggered home and broke out our osechi box. None of us had the energy to shower first, so we opted to just eat.
The osechi box this year was even more awesome than last year. It was three full boxes of bite sized treats with an extra box containing our New Year fish - a grilled fellow in action pose. Notice that, try as we might and appetites that we definitely had, we just couldn't quite polish off the feast. We did a pretty good job, though.
Tummies full, Russell and I proceded to pass out on the floor under the kotatsu. Lis was made of stouter stuff and worked on her dissertation- also under the kotatsu. Even after the nap, Russell was struggling with the crazy wake-up time and 6 hour hike. Around 6pm he went to bed and hasn't been seen since. Lis and I went to Sannomiya (downtown) to see the action at the local shrine. The roads leading the the shrine were cut off to traffic and lined with food stalls. Crowds of people were still streaming into the shrine to pray, get their first New Year fortune and buy lucky charms. The trees on the premises had been surrounded by netting to save them from visitors tying their fortunes off on the branches (which is tradition) and instead the netting was covered with a coat of white paper knots. Picture to come. We bought some ichigo daifuku (strawberries wrapped in sweet bean paste and rice dough) and headed home.
You will notice a bush in this picture. This was taken before New Year when the shrine was setting up for the festivities. People could leave their fortunes and their charms from the year before at this bush. Now check out the bush ON New Years. 12 hours of luck charms later...
I had rolled my ankle just before finishing the hike in the morning, so we stopped at a local store and bought an ankle brace. It helps a lot. Tomorrow we are off to either Kyoto or Nara - and there will be no shortage of walking there. Best to shore up now.
We have mostly been working in the mornings (Lis had a dissertation deadline to meet) and exploring Kobe in the afternoon. For the last day of the year we got out of the house a little earlier than normal and did some last minute exploring before everything shut down for New Years.
Left on the to do list? A walk through Kitano (the European-style houses on the hill), a mattcha/redbean latte from Starbucks (only spotted the day before) and a swing through Harborland to see the water (and perhaps the pink pirate ship). We managed to hit the first two birds with one stone by drinking our latte at the Starbucks that's IN one of the old houses in Kitano. We not only had the mattcha/ redbean latte, but also the redbean "cube danish" with the mattcha frosting. After a lazy morning chatting, we wandered down the hill towards the water. We stopped in Chinatown for a steamed nikuman and then did a lap around Harborland.
Having done our tourist duty we headed home to prepare for the New Year. We made soba (buckwheat noodle) soup with the fancy red carrots that come out for the New Year and we settled in for an evening of nationally televised musical splendor. They did not disappoint this year. There were many instant costume changes, enka stars rising up on enormous chinese dragons, pop idols playing with interactive decorative screens and a Japanese version of "Mexican" dancing to an enka song called "Mariachi."
At 11:45 the show ended and scenes from famous temples and shrines around Japan started moving across the TV. The Buddhists started ringing the enormous temple bells (108 times?), people were waiting anxiously to pray for good fortune in the coming year, there were bonfires and people skiing with torches in Hokkaido. At midnight the throngs of visitors poured into the temples and shrines to pray, dispose of old luck charms and buy charms for the coming year.
One Japanese tradition is to go to a temple or shrine for midnight and join these throngs. I was up for it, but Russell and Lis couldn't be budged. For good reason, I suppose... we had decided to do hatsu-hinode or the first greeting of the sun. That meant waking up at 4am and hiking up a mountain to get the best view of the sun as it crested above the horizon at 7am. They were looking forward to their full four hours of sleep. It was probably for the best.
We did get up at 4am. We made a thermos of tea and packed snacks and dry underclothes to change into at the top. We managed to hit the street at 4:45 and hiked up behind our house to a trailhead that would take us to the top of Mt Maya. This is the same Mt Maya we swore we would never hike up again after getting the idea to go hiking our first summer in Japan. It was no easy hike, but we did better this time than the first time. Lis (mountain goat she is and dead set on seeing the sun no matter what) followed a more seasoned team of hikers and made it to the top of the mountain before us. Russell and I plodded our way up as well and also managed to arrive about 15-20 minutes before the sun rose. Perfect timing. 
After the sunrise we changed into our dry clothes, ate snacks and reassessed. We could go down the way we came up (boring) or try a new route that would take us over to the neighboring mountain and down to the Kobe reservoir and Nunobiki waterfall. We opted for route #2. We were very footsore by the end of the trip, but rather proud of the accomplishment, too. We staggered home and broke out our osechi box. None of us had the energy to shower first, so we opted to just eat. 
The osechi box this year was even more awesome than last year. It was three full boxes of bite sized treats with an extra box containing our New Year fish - a grilled fellow in action pose. Notice that, try as we might and appetites that we definitely had, we just couldn't quite polish off the feast. We did a pretty good job, though.
Tummies full, Russell and I proceded to pass out on the floor under the kotatsu. Lis was made of stouter stuff and worked on her dissertation- also under the kotatsu. Even after the nap, Russell was struggling with the crazy wake-up time and 6 hour hike. Around 6pm he went to bed and hasn't been seen since. Lis and I went to Sannomiya (downtown) to see the action at the local shrine. The roads leading the the shrine were cut off to traffic and lined with food stalls. Crowds of people were still streaming into the shrine to pray, get their first New Year fortune and buy lucky charms. The trees on the premises had been surrounded by netting to save them from visitors tying their fortunes off on the branches (which is tradition) and instead the netting was covered with a coat of white paper knots. Picture to come. We bought some ichigo daifuku (strawberries wrapped in sweet bean paste and rice dough) and headed home.
You will notice a bush in this picture. This was taken before New Year when the shrine was setting up for the festivities. People could leave their fortunes and their charms from the year before at this bush. Now check out the bush ON New Years. 12 hours of luck charms later...
I had rolled my ankle just before finishing the hike in the morning, so we stopped at a local store and bought an ankle brace. It helps a lot. Tomorrow we are off to either Kyoto or Nara - and there will be no shortage of walking there. Best to shore up now.
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